


Ebbs and Flows

by cuddlebone



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Accidentally Nonlinear Narrative, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Jaguar Sharks, M/M, Marine Biologist Soonyoung, Prince Wonwoo, Underwater, nonlinear narrative i think? it's very dreamy and i guess a bit choppy but still chronological
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-04
Updated: 2018-01-04
Packaged: 2019-02-28 00:51:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13260156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cuddlebone/pseuds/cuddlebone
Summary: Soonyoung is startled by the resentment and anger he feels towards the ocean as a whole. After his best friend is viciously killed by an undiscovered shark species, his thirst for revenge goes beyond his own comprehension. He’s made it his mission to discover the species, and to spear the very same shark that did it between the eyes when he does.Wonwoo is an ocean prince, and he’d empty oceans and capsize ships for Soonyoung, but most of all, his presence brings Soonyoung to love the ocean for its wrath as well as its calm again.





	Ebbs and Flows

**Author's Note:**

> PROMPT #032: marine biologist and ocean explorer soonyoung meeting ocean prince wonwoo while on an underwater escapade to discover new organisms/creatures in the deeper areas in the ocean
> 
> WARNINGS: I'm telling you now! Junhui is dead in this story! And Soonyoung's dealing with grief and loss and acceptance. If you can't handle those kinds of themes, please do click away! Otherwise, I think it's the most neutral story I've written, so no worries besides angst (which is to be expected of me at this point, I guess).

**When the Moon Embraces the Sea**

 

If Soonyoung were to be represented by the ocean’s state, it’d be the clear, shallow waters, the ones where the jagged rocks are cushioned with moss and the fine grains of white sand form gentle patterns on the ocean floor. The part of the ocean where nothing can happen to you, and you’re safe to lounge and lie on your back, floating and bathing. But he’d frankly outgrown swimming in the shallows, and all too suddenly, like a wave rising out of flat water, he was pushed and sent neck-deep and floundering in the deep blue.

 

Wonwoo is the deep blue, the cold currents and the ten-foot waves, curling and foaming at their crests. He is the dark, bottomless, endless waters beyond.

 

 

—

 

 

The serenity of the ocean is best felt when out with someone special, best of all the feeling of being nothing but two small, indistinct blobs in a vast, endless place like these waters. This is why every expedition of Soonyoung’s consisted of a two-man crew. It was always Soonyoung and his best friend, the one who knew just how much ketchup to put in his midnight-snack sandwiches, the one who knew every scar and mole and freckle on his body, who had been there to put the sunscreen on the spots he couldn't reach and slap him with diving flippers when he acted too “ _flip_ pant”. Junhui.

 

They’d swim so low that their stomachs brushed against the sandy floor, and they’d laugh at each other’s smushed, deformed faces in the goggles and mouth-pieces, and they’d peek through cracks in the rocks just in case they came across something special and undiscovered; they’d always wanted to front a new discovery together. It was a promise sworn through pinky-swears, ever since they were middle-schoolers sitting in the library, heads pressed together, poring over every oceanography book they could get their hands on. They always swore that before they kicked the bucket, they’d have discovered something together.

 

They were due to discover this new species- they could feel that in their bones. They were on the brink of it. But every dive is fruitless after what happened, and now Soonyoung is treading shallowly along the ocean floor, full oxygen tank strapped to his back and emitting bubbles that float above him. He’s expecting nothing but the usual.

 

Most of the fruitlessness is his own doing; after what happened three weeks ago, he’d done nothing but scour the ocean floors in this same area of water, day after day, rowing his little butter-yellow motorboat out and anchoring it in more or less the same spot. He searches and waits, his mind clouded over by the idea that revenge will fix what happened to Junhui.

 

 

There was a boat- “the Red Herring,” Junhui would say as he patted the hull- and it was indeed hand-painted red by the two many years before. First, they used it to go out and catch the nicest waves before any other surfers roaming the coastal waters could get to them, but then when their mutual interest in studying the ocean bloomed, they started using it to explore the waters beyond their usual realm. And they had painted it to look, from a distance, like a remarkably small cruise ship, hence the Red Herring nickname. (And it lives up to its name now, distracting Soonyoung from his stream of thought quite pointlessly.)

 

They lived on that boat. They kept all their favourite belongings on it, picture albums and stuffed animals and encyclopedias, and its cramped, dingy old rooms looked so bright and welcoming and homely only because of all the memories they’d made in them.

 

(Soonyoung can’t step foot in that boat anymore. It’s docked in the harbor and has been for two weeks. If he so much as remembers its existence, all the memories surge forward so forcefully, churning and pounding the inside of his head, which is already swimming in the years’ worth of memories, that fat tears begin to spill down his cheeks. This is why he rented an even smaller yellow boat for his mission now.)

 

 

“Ready to find this thing?” Junhui climbs down the trap-ladder into the small below-deck cabin, housing two futon beds nailed to the walls and a pair of storage boxes containing odds and ends of theirs. It’s like their own home away from home. Soonyoung’s lying on his stomach on the bed, and he groans into his pillow in reply.

 

Junhui is only ten days older than Soonyoung, but he always felt like his much-older, much-cooler brother. So when he starts tickling him and poking his spindly fingers into the soft flesh of Soonyoung’s back, he giggles hard. “Your fingers feel like acupuncture needles being poked into all the wrong nerves.”

 

“Acupuncture needles aren’t supposed to poke into any nerves,” Junhui corrects. “And I’m trying to push all your buttons. _Get it_ …”

 

“Find the button that gets me to get up, and then I’ll be ready to dive.”

 

Junhui hoists him up with a grunt, carrying him up the ladder. Soonyoung doesn’t even need to resist, simply reclining in the comfort of the person he trusts most’s arms. Junhui’s the type to throw him overboard and into the water as soon as they get on deck, but he’s also the type to fish him back out and wrap him in towels, pinching his cheeks and cooing over him.

 

He sets him on the edge of the boat this time, more serious than he usually is. Soonyoung supposes it’s because of all the hours of grueling research (the research papers sit in a fluttering stack in the cabin downstairs). He tosses the second wetsuit in Soonyoung’s direction and has half of his on and zipped tight before he talks again. They’re the only thing in sight today, jagged grey water lapping at the boat.

 

“Jaguar shark, huh? I’ll bet ten dollars we find solid proof of its existence this time,” Junhui says, cocking his head towards Soonyoung, egging him into making a bet of his own. It’s all fun and games when they’re safe on their boat, and it sets the stakes a little higher, but it’ll all be forgotten once they dive. Then they become silent, seamless partners-in-crime, working together like same-brained twins.

 

“I’ll bet _fifteen_ dollars _and_ a Shirley Temple we find nothing,” Soonyoung replies, crossing his arms. He’s still a little tired and sour, and his gut doesn’t have a good feeling about this trip. But he pushes it aside, because when does he feel like this about the ocean he loves so much? It must be feelings leftover from something else muddling into this.

 

“I think I can already taste the maraschino cherry,” Junhui teases good-naturedly.

 

The stakes were much higher than they thought after all. When they swam down, carrying lamps and clunky waterproof cameras, and soon came right in the face of an unknown species of shark, Soonyoung was mostly unfazed. All he could think of was _bummer, now I owe the dummy a Shirley Temple_ and _a dinner._

 

They took pictures. Picture-proof. And Junhui was so unafraid and so into getting the perfect shot of the shark that he came too close. He forgot, momentarily, that most research suggested this particular shark was elusive and aggressive when threatened.

 

And then it all became blurry around the edges, and Soonyoung can hardly remember anything. He remembers looking for Junhui and not finding him, and he remembers the ocean water pigmented a diluted red. _Like a Shirley Temple,_ he’d promised himself when he was concentrating on swimming up to get the coast-guards to come out and help them. _It’s just… someone spilled the grenadine in the ocean. Junhui’s definitely just waiting for me down there. He’s fine. He’s trying to mess with me. I just need to get help._

 

(Junhui could never be bad. He was harmless, thoughtful, and gentle. But sometimes, those who’ve passed away are put on such a pedestal that those who miss them may forget that they were humans after all, and they were destined to be reduced to bones and dust eventually, too.)

 

 

—

 

 

When he glides along a thick bed of sea-grass that sways with every wave, he thinks he feels something behind him. That’s not unusual; he sees squids and sharks and jellyfish every day, so he turns around, but not sharply enough, what with the water bogging him down. He sees a quick shadow and a few blades of seaweed swishing in the wrong direction as the thing brushes against them in its swift escape. It makes his skin prickle with curiosity and it sets his mind racing. What if he’s finally found it? He _knew_ he should’ve brought his spear. Instead it lies somewhere in the cabin of the motorboat above, forgotten and rendering Soonyoung weaponless.

 

_Don’t think of that. And don’t think of Junhui either. Focus on catching the beast._

 

Maybe pretending to ignore the thing will bring it back out of its hideaway. He turns around and swims away, keeping an eye over his shoulder. He can’t help the joy-less, vengeful smile that twists at his lips when he sees something steal away from the mossy rocks and begin following him again. Something large, pale, and menacingly quiet.

 

This time, he turns so fast that he gets whiplash, but he forces the blur away from his vision so he can see whatever’s following him before it tries to hide again. The water’s as empty as it always is, devoid of anything but quietly pulsing surges and darkness in every direction, and what he expects to see is not what he sees at all. He expects to see nothing but wild eyes and pointed teeth and a pink throat as the same shark that took his friend swallows him whole too. Yet against all odds, he somehow finds himself nose-to-nose with a startled-looking boy.

 

The boy is beautiful, and that’s the first word that would come to anyone’s mind when they see him. He’s frozen in place, so it’s all the better for taking in every detail (and there are many details) in his appearance. He has tendrils of deep green kelp that are rooted in his hair and curl around his pearl-pale arms. His hair is so black and so stark against the sunlit blue of the water that it looks purple, and he’s wearing soft white cloth that just barely floats in place to cover his wide, bare chest. He has moss on his shoulders and two strings of pearls, one a necklace sitting above his collarbones and the other a diadem stretching across his forehead and weaving into his hair.

 

Once he takes in all of these things and his head is no longer swimming with them, he realizes that; one, the boy has no oxygen tank, and no other means of breathing, and two, he doesn’t seem to need it at all. He seems to be breathing, and he looks both familiarly human, like any of the university students in his classes, and magical and otherworldly, his skin glistening like silver fish scales, and actual sea creatures themselves gravitating towards him. He can see seahorses and spindly little eels swimming through the gaps in his clothes, and tiny fish and krill burrowing in his hair.

 

He feels overwhelmed in the presence of someone he just knows isn’t a regular person, because he can feel that this being is someone both immensely powerful and serene and safe. It’s intuition telling him so, and it can’t be wrong- he feels like magic, and he feels like royalty, and he doesn’t have to do anything but stand, startled, in front of him to make him realize that.

 

Coming across this is almost more than finding the elusive jaguar shark would mean to Soonyoung, but all the same, he should remember that the prince of the oceans had chosen to be seen by human eyes this time, and chosen to be discovered, and that he’d been curiously following the lonely little diver as he swam for a long, long time now. It wasn’t chance.

 

Soonyoung is the lonely little diver, and Wonwoo is the prince of endless oceans, stretching as far as the eye can see and beyond.

 

He twists at a bit of kelp in his hair and smiles at Soonyoung, fear in his eyes now replaced with quiet wonder. Soonyoung supposes there’s no other way to communicate than with body language down here, so he’ll do his best.

 

How strange he must look to this magical boy who he can only assume knows not of the world above the ocean’s surface. His flippers and wetsuit and goggles must look so foreign and fascinating- as fascinating as he finds him to be when he walks along the ocean floor like it’s a sidewalk and inhales water like it’s oxygen.

 

  _You’re magic, right? You’re dripping with magic. You’re royalty, too, right?_ He wants to ask, but when he opens his mouth, nothing but a few bubbles and a muffled, unintelligible noise come out. _I guess if you are magic, you’ll hear my thoughts and be able to answer._

 

He snorts and laughs silently (bubbles gurgle up and around him), but he nods once he’s done laughing at clumsy, human Soonyoung. Everything he does is slow and precise and decided, mellow like the water, his entire body rippling and swaying like a blade of grass in the beds around them. He has all the time in the world, and all the power, too. The ocean isn’t a force to reckon with, and Soonyoung imagines that having it under his power, with its tsunamis and furious maelstroms, is what leaves him so easy and sure of himself.

 

_An ocean king, or a merman?_ He wonders. This isn’t a yes or no question, so how will he respond as he has been with nods and head-shakes?

 

Just as Soonyoung begins to imagine what his voice must sound like, _if_ he has a voice, he opens his mouth and a single word rolls off his tongue like a wave rolling ashore. “Neither.”

 

His voice is crystal-clear and oceans-deep, and it sends a shock down Soonyoung’s spine. It’s booming but it’s quiet, and he doesn’t really know why he lets it affect him so much.

 

_A prince?_

 

“A prince,” he echoes, nodding, and his voice really does echo around them, carrying in the water and whispering into Soonyoung’s ears.

 

_So can you hear all of my thoughts?_

 

“I can do more than just that…” he says, swimming in a wide arc above and around Soonyoung so that the water swirls around him and sediment floats into his goggles, and he continues talking only when he’s suspended upside-down in front of him, eye-to-eye and the rest of him stretched out above. “I could’ve capsized your boat or exploded your oxygen tank.” The irony is in how casual he sounds, as he’s poised harmlessly and playfully in front of him, but Wonwoo confirming his own power scares Soonyoung nonetheless.  

 

Wonwoo realizes that he’s scared him, and that wasn’t his intention. “Don’t worry- I wouldn’t have done that. I chose to let you see me now because I like you.”

 

The way he says it is simple and unembellished, and Soonyoung likes that. It doesn’t have any weight to it (neither does the ocean, until you’re drowning in it), nor does it have any romantic strings attached, to be told that you’re likable by an ocean prince, hundreds of meters below sea level. It’s… it’s just honesty.

 

But it’s inconvenient to be infatuated by someone so beautiful, and he’s on a mission, and love and friendship are too painful to think of now, so Soonyoung does his best to stay clipped and reserved until the prince leaves him alone, surrounded by foggy blue nothing.

 

 

—

 

 

There’s a message in a chipped green beer bottle rolling around on the floor of Soonyoung’s bobbing yellow boat when he finally surfaces and clambers up on deck. He has no idea how it got there, and he’s blanking on who could’ve written it for him in the first place, forgetting that magic is a vast field and Wonwoo could do this with a snap of his fingers.

 

He has a hard time stuffing his fingers in the bottle rim and wrestling the saltwater-tattered paper out without ripping it, and when he does unroll it, it’s ambiguous and vague and confusing, and whoever it is knows his name already. It’s only when he docks his boat and walks along the pier, shrouded in fog and darkness, that he remembers. Wonwoo isn’t just someone who exists on the ocean floor- he is a prince, and he _is_ magical, and he’s more likely than not to be the one who placed the message in a glass bottle and on his boat. It makes sense.

 

But the message itself feels like a jab, like mockery in the gentlest way. It feels like Wonwoo had probed deep into his thoughts and sifted right through his lifetime’s worth of happenings in a few seconds, as if Soonyoung had laid it out and told him the whole story. Wonwoo knew too much for how little Soonyoung was willing to tell him.

 

It only takes a few well-chosen words to expose the raw truth that he knows deep down but keeps trying to stifle; stifle with delusions of finding Junhui down there, coupled with his brain linking hunting the shark with somehow reviving Junhui.

 

_What are you expecting to find in the ocean?_

 

 —

 

 

He siphons out of nowhere, materializing where nothing but a surge of cool current was a second ago. The cool current still washes over Soonyoung and makes his ears pop and his arms prickle with goosebumps.

 

“What are you expecting to find in the ocean?” Wonwoo asks, reiterating the message in the bottle and confirming that it was him. He’s smiling and it’s gentle and dazzling, his eyes and skin shining like fish scales in sunlight. Soonyoung still finds it hard to wrap his head around the way he just floats, not one muscle in his body moving to keep him suspended in the water. The water holds him (or maybe, he can control the currents and he holds the water), and whether or not to swim seems to be a choice to him.

 

He concentrates on clearing his thoughts to send his answer to Wonwoo, because he hasn’t yet figured out how to talk underwater without it sounding like gurgles and static. His answer is clipped and closed-off, because he’s not going to willingly open any more doors for Wonwoo to probe through, even if he chooses to use magic to siphon information out of him anyway. He’s stubborn that way. _I’m a marine biologist. I do almost everything in the water._

 

“Is that why I liked you from the start? Do you think I would be a marine biologist if I were a human?” The curiosities roll off his tongue like waves roll, foaming at their crests in strong wind, and Soonyoung muses that maybe the ocean as a whole is curious, and that’s why waves lap at land, to get a taste of it. Especially if Wonwoo’s supposed to be the ocean personified.

 

_Who’s to say?_ He thinks, swimming down a little lower and tinkering with the tightness on his goggles so they stop pressing indents into his nose. _I’m looking for something right now. You can swim with me, if you want, but please don’t distract me._

 

“What are you looking for? Maybe I can help.”

 

_A new species. One that’s undiscovered by humans._

Wonwoo allows his body to drop down a few meters to match Soonyoung’s stance, his face pressed uncomfortably close to Soonyoung’s. It seems he has no boundaries (the ocean has none), even though it’s vast and spacious around them. Today, pale yellow kelp is woven into his green-black hair, and a tiny turtle is perched on his shoulder. He’s floating, but unlike Soonyoung, whose entire image ripples and sways in the currents, everything on him is still because he’s willing it to stay so. His clothes don’t shift or fill with water, and his hair stays messy but secured in place.

 

“Am I a new species?” The way he looks at him, eyebrows raised, eyes sparkling, is so dizzying that Soonyoung almost nods in spite of himself.

 

_No, silly, you’re Wonwoo._ Soonyoung shakes his head at him, the motion sluggish when done underwater, but his eyes are smiling. _What I’m talking about is a sea creature._ He doesn’t want to specify because he doesn’t want to invest Wonwoo in this (it’s his mission and his alone), therefore choosing to remain vague and quiet. But later on he realizes that he should’ve specified, because Wonwoo will cross oceans and search for every undiscovered species and hand them all to him if he doesn’t.

 

“And you chose this spot to look because the biodiversity is incredible, right?” Wonwoo is rhetorical, because he knows, and he sounds a little bit smug, because he’s the one who’s built the coral reefs and whispered life into every creature, both great and small, whether plankton, mollusk, or shark. Which also means he indirectly caused Junhui’s demise- Soonyoung _can’t_ blame him, and he absolutely cannot despise someone so endearing if he tried, but his feelings towards Wonwoo and his attempts at “helping” are very conflicting as a result.

 

“I have something for you to discover,” he adds when Soonyoung stays silent.

 

_Is it really fair to have an ocean prince who can bend water at will-_

 

“Nobody will know. Follow me,” and he darts off into the darkness below, the part where the sunlight can’t filter down and Soonyoung can hardly see past his hands. He wants to grouse about Wonwoo being a show-off, and _why won’t he use some of his special magic to make it easier on Soonyoung to follow him?_ He also wants to grouse that he doesn’t have time to dawdle around, and that it’s a particular species of shark he’s hunting, but he is a marine biologist at heart. The mention of _any_ new species piques his curiosity.

 

He tries to follow, but once he’s drenched and shrouded in cloudy darkness, he loses his bearings. And more importantly, he loses Wonwoo, because he never even saw where he went. He has no voice to call out this deep down, and he’s crippled in every other way, so he just hovers in the same spot, waiting in vain.

 

Not scared but no longer relaxed, he gropes around in hopes of finding something. Eventually, his hands grasp onto long tendrils of something slimy and slick- it doesn’t take a second to recognize that he’s found himself in the middle of a kelp forest. If he had light, he’d see tendrils that stretched up and around him like trees, knotting together and drifting lazily in the currents.

 

And then, a warm hand shoots out of the dark and clasps onto his, tangling its fingers into his like the tendrils of algae and seaweed do. He holds onto it, knowing that it’s Wonwoo, and allows himself to be pulled along somewhere. It’s easy for Wonwoo to drag his entire body (carrying oceans on his shoulders makes Soonyoung seem like a weightless speck of dust), and when he looks over his shoulder at him and says, “Didn’t I tell you to follow me?” it’s much kinder and more clueless than it sounds.

 

_I got lost. You swam too fast for me._

Wonwoo squeezes his hand and stops swimming, so that Soonyoung’s body is pushed into his because of the momentum from halting so suddenly. He thinks this was deliberately planned, because when he comes crashing into Wonwoo, he catches him with open arms and embraces him for a while. Soonyoung doesn’t have it in him to complain about being held in the arms of the ocean.

 

“Just a minute,” Wonwoo says, and he ducks away, out of sight, returning with something cupped in his delicate hands. The thing doesn’t move at all- anything with a pulse that Soonyoung finds underwater and brings up for research squirms and rushes to escape his hands, so he’s envious of this.

 

_Um, Wonwoo, I can’t see very well._ He never knew he’d have a moment where he’d hate being so _human,_ but now is the time to feel that. He can’t see in darkness, he can’t be down here without all this clunky gear, and he could never be as elegant and at-home as Wonwoo is in the water.

 

But there’s faint light that gets brighter. Electric bluish-white, pulsating gently. Lining a chiseled shape like a connect-the-dots drawing. As it gets brighter, it becomes more obvious that it’s Wonwoo whose very skin has begun illuminating, and it’s Wonwoo whose figure is dotted with lights.

 

_You’re… glowing. You’re… you’re bioluminescent?_ It comes out as a question, but it’s not one that needs to be answered. Wonwoo glows faintly, like fallen chips of stars and moonlight were sewn into his skin. He nods and smiles, the pearl crown that flows across his forehead shining.

 

He’s forgotten all about the new species in Wonwoo’s hands, as well as his original mission, and even the fresh pain that anchors his heart in a dark, sad place- for Soonyoung to forget about all of that means he’s impossibly distracted. When his eyes shift down, Wonwoo spreads his palms and a fish floats up, suspended in the water. “Put on a show for Soonyoung,” he whispers to it, deliberately audible.

 

Its long, fluttering fins begin to pulsate and glow, much like Wonwoo, and its scales begin to flash different colours. Bright pink and gold, and stripes of blues and greens, all merging into one rainbow-like hue.

 

Soonyoung giggles in spite of himself. _Wow._

 

“When you laugh, bubbles gurgle up and float around you, and I love it,” Wonwoo says. “Here, hold it,” and he places the tiny, sedated fish in Soonyoung’s palm once it stops flashing its colours. “What will you do with it?”

 

Soonyoung snaps out of his daze. _I guess I’ll be pioneering the discovery of a new species. I should’ve told you earlier, that the species I’m looking for…_ and here he trails off, still unsure of whether he wants to divulge this information or not.

 

Wonwoo shrugs and holds one of his hands, the one devoid of the fish. “Let’s get you back to your pretty yellow boat, then.”

 

 

—

 

 

In his dreams and in his mind, Soonyoung dwells in the past. The only part of his day where he concentrates on the now is the sliver of it spent in the water. Every night, he dreams vividly of some old memory plucked from the shadowy trenches of his mind, his mind replaying images of Junhui like a broken record until he wakes up, throat dry and eyes and pillow wet. He’s halted living ever since Junhui was taken from him, his only productivity being his fruitless underwater searches. He wishes he could stop time, maybe even rewind it- but all he can do is watch it flow while he sits and wishes it would ebb.

 

He floats through reality, auto-piloting through his responsibilities and keeping it together enough to maintain the façade. It’s all a lie, when his insides are rusting and crumbling like the remains of a shipwreck. In his mind, he refuses to “let go” and “move on”, reacting very adversely to those words ever since he heard them in handfuls at Junhui’s funeral.

 

Tonight, Wonwoo steps into his dreams, peculiarly enough. He stands knee-deep in frothy white waves, and there’s something wistful in his eyes. Like he knows more than he lets on, about the future and the past and the present. “You can’t change the past, Soonyoung.”

 

When Soonyoung wakes, he realizes that the Wonwoo in the dream was a projection of reality, another message in a bottle sent from him. It’s magic, and it unsettles him only because that part deep, deep down knows what he’s trying to tell him. And he’s not yet ready to give up and let Junhui float away from him.

 

 

—

 

 

Once they break the water’s surface with a surge and a loud splash, they idle there, near the rusty old hull of the boat that looms over them. Wonwoo’s holding the fish just under the surface of the water so it can breathe, and he has his other hand on Soonyoung’s shoulder. The weight of it looms over him like the boat, and like a tentative, unspoken question. “You want to come on land?” Soonyoung asks, using his voice for the first time in Wonwoo’s presence.

 

Wonwoo smiles (his smiles are always deeper than just a reaction to whatever’s in the moment, like he knows and sees more than he lets on) and shakes his head. “I’d love to, but maybe some other time.”

 

“No, come on! I wanna show you around my place, the way you showed me around down there,” he says, jerking his chin to the depths below. The boat casts shadow on them and the waves are picking up, and Soonyoung’s teeth chatter in spite of himself.

 

He shrugs, contemplating. “I have always wanted to. It’s so fascinating up there.”

 

“That’s how I feel about being in the water!  So why not come with me,” Soonyoung says, taking Wonwoo’s hand from his shoulder and attempting to pull him towards the little ladder that one must scale to reach the deck of the boat. Wonwoo complies, at first hesitantly, like he’s still got an objection, and then more agreeably when Soonyoung smiles encouragingly and squeezes his hand.

 

Soonyoung climbs first, his wetsuit streaming water down his legs, dripping off of his flippers. Once he clambers on deck, he disappears, Wonwoo hearing the sound of his flippers slapping against the wooden panels as he runs off to some compartment. He returns with a little plastic fish-tank, and reaches down and holds it out for Wonwoo to put the fish in.

 

Then he sets it on the edge of the boat, rather precariously, and extends both arms to help Wonwoo climb aboard. In the water, Wonwoo may be the prince of everything, from bits of dead kelp to whales and waves, but on land he’s clumsy as a child taking his first steps. Soonyoung finds it lovably strange (and strangely lovable).

 

A setting sun’s light is the brightest and yellowest. Shining sideways from where it’s close to disappearing on the horizon, it frames Wonwoo as Soonyoung takes a good, clear look at him for the first time. On land, he looks smaller and less powerful, the air around him more tentative than sure of himself. He’s still just as beautiful as he was in the water, though, heightened by his skin glistening with wetness and his lips curled in exclamation at the view of his home, but from above. He peers overboard, watching what bits of life he can see swimming through the clear waves.

 

As the boat sails, cutting through water and spreading froth behind it, Soonyoung observes Wonwoo, who stands right by him and the control boards. His clothes have shrunken to something more reminiscent of a pirate shirt cinched into pants, and he curls inwards on himself, like he’s subconsciously trying to hide from all the new sensory experiences. Soonyoung starts when he remembers that this is Wonwoo’s first experience breathing oxygen and feeling wind on his skin, and hearing loud noises like the motor’s rumbling and the seagulls’ cries.

 

“Doing good, ocean prince?” Soonyoung shouts over the sound of the motor and the whipping wind.

 

Wonwoo scowls at the mockery, but nods anyway. “I can’t wait to see the city,” he mumbles half to himself, but Soonyoung catches his words anyway. He looks onwards at the land they’re quickly approaching, a cluster of buildings and black-sand beaches.

 

 

Docking the boat and hiking up the beach towards the little shacks that served as the university’s on-site research labs shouldn’t have taken twenty minutes, but it does because Wonwoo is curious about everything and Soonyoung doesn’t mind. He would’ve minded three weeks ago, but he’s changed a lot after the shock that hit him, and he doesn’t have it in him to be deny anyone their pleasures. One would say he’s been hollowed out and shell-shocked, and it wouldn’t be particularly incorrect, but it’s more because of all the regrets circling in his head. He remembers being angry with Junhui over stupid things sometimes, holding grudges and denying simple requests that he could’ve easily granted, refusing hugs and arm-wrestle matches. It wasn’t often, but it’s all so jarring and it blankets him like a rip-curl, suffocating him with guilt, now that Junhui is…

 

So, he lets Wonwoo stop and bend down and play with dry sand, watch it sift through his fingers and stick to the wet droplets. He lets Wonwoo stop and smell the nightly ocean air for as long as he wants, standing behind him and seeing nothing but his arms outstretched and his hair billowing.

 

He walks Wonwoo through the city, briefly. He’s timid and he flinches at every car horn and all the music playing from the loudspeaker, and he looks pitifully lost in the crowds, which only attracts further attention to him.

 

“Noisy, isn’t it?” Soonyoung whispers despite the noise, because he doesn’t want to startle Wonwoo by raising his voice. Wonwoo reads his lips and nods.

 

“I’ve never heard this much of it in my life,” Wonwoo says. The only sounds in Wonwoo’s home are those of water lapping and surging, and the occasional whale or dolphin or distant motorboat speeding along above.

 

“It’s gross, isn’t it?” He takes Wonwoo’s hand and leads him through the grimy streets, sidestepping nightclub doors and overflowing restaurants and trashcans full of cigarette butts and broken beer bottles. He focuses on making sure Wonwoo doesn’t get hit by a car trying to run from the loudness and strobe lights and gaggles of people, putting himself as a barrier that walks along the street-side of the sidewalk, shielding Wonwoo in. He needs to get them back to the beach, back to his lab to document the fish.

 

This is the kind of place that’s least suited to Wonwoo; he’s as misplaced here as finding a shiny pearl in a junkyard would be. But still, he was so curious about it, and Soonyoung couldn’t have just told him how bad it was, he needed to see it with his own two eyes.

 

(The same can be said about Wonwoo being unable to tell Soonyoung how pointless killing the jaguar shark would be. He needs to show him, so Soonyoung comes to the realization himself.)

 

“Hey, Soonyoung, I was meaning to tell y-,” it’s one of the marine biology students in his class, someone who had a past of chasing Junhui around their university’s campus and trying to get him to be their research partner (whereas Junhui always chose Soonyoung), so Soonyoung can hardly keep a straight face when their eyes sparkle suddenly when they land on Wonwoo and they cut themselves off, instead saying, “wait, who is _this_?”

 

“I’m busy right now. Wonwoo, come on,” Soonyoung says, grabbing him by the hand and trying hard to get through the doorway, which is blocked by their inquisitor. People have been giving him a break every time he’s rude, blaming it on grief and forgiving him easily, so he hates how he lets himself get away with outright rudeness nowadays. “New discovery,” he says, lifting the fish-tank, and the student scrambles out of the way, cursing and exclaiming. It’s not every day someone (a student, no less) walks in with a whole new species captured and alive in their hands. A groundbreaking day is one where they get a few hazy pictures of a creature, so this is something else.

 

But Soonyoung doesn’t feel it, because he suddenly realizes that Wonwoo’s too pure and too good to be up here on land with all these people. He doesn’t want to be the one to expose him to all the oddities and corruption in the world, and he wants to minimize the time he has him around all these irritating people. But for now, he needs to officially record all the data and inform all the higher-ups of the discovery.

 

Despite their hands being clasped together, Wonwoo somehow squirms out of his grip and Soonyoung’s too surrounded by zealous students and voices to notice it. Wonwoo squirms out of his grip like a fish still slick with water, and he disappears in the sea of faces. He’s probably off messing with some laboratory instrument or setting aquarium-confined fish free.

 

And there are many fish in the sea, Soonyoung thinks through all the noise of people cramped around him to see the iridescent fish in the fish-tank he’s set on his lab counter. But Wonwoo’s the only one he really wants to be with right now.

 

And there are many fish in the sea, quite literally too, he realizes in the middle of furiously scribbling some data on the location and depth of the water in which he found it. The ocean’s full of fish, and why’s this one so special anyway? He puts the pen down, leaving the sentence hanging, and turns around, coming face-to-face with everyone but the person he wants to be with. He wades through the crowd and ignores questions, covering his ears with his hands even, until he’s clear of them and out the door. (When has Soonyoung been like this about something so important to him? His whole career supposedly culminates to this point, but now that it’s here, he couldn’t care less? When has he been this dismissive and vague?)

 

(When did all the purpose in his life drain out of him? _Three weeks ago,_ he’ll say. When did it become that his only reason for living was not to live at all; to live in the past, and to hunt down a shark that probably acted out of fear and instinct? When did it all filter down to this misery? Why does he want nothing but to be in someone’s arms, and to swim down so deep that he can’t see the light above anymore?)

 

 

Wonwoo is on the beach that flows right from the front steps of the research lab building- a private university beach, usually full of kids playing volleyball and swimmers doing laps. It’s empty because the sun’s setting, and Wonwoo’s obvious as always on land, but he has company. The same nosy student from earlier is not-so-subtly bumping into him every chance they get and running their hands along his shoulders and arms. Soonyoung bristles. This is exactly why he wanted to take Wonwoo back to the water, because of people like this.

 

(Soonyoung forgets that Wonwoo, despite being pure and gentle and child-like, remains a wise, millennium-old prince. He doesn’t need Soonyoung to protect him from silly things like these.)

 

“I hate to interrupt this-,” he quite likes interrupting it, in fact, “but Wonwoo and I have to go now.”

 

Wonwoo gives him a sideways look. He’s standing tall, with his fingers entwined together, hands held behind his back, eyes flitting between Soonyoung and the student like he’s an invisible third person viewer, excluded from the situation.

 

“Aw, but I was just getting to know him,” they say, flashing Wonwoo (not Soonyoung) a hundred-watt smile. “Can you give me your phone number?”

 

“Phone-?” Wonwoo begins, but Soonyoung’s too impatient and too worn-out to let this play out much longer without popping a fuse and exploding in a shower of yellow sparks. He grabs his hand and marches away, sinking ankle-deep in sand as he counter-productively tries to run through it, and kicking it behind him and no doubt in Wonwoo’s face.

 

_It’s not Wonwoo’s fault you’re upset,_ a reasonable little voice pipes up in the back of Soonyoung’s head.

 

 “People like that take advantage of you for being innocent and not knowing better. They’re always on the hunt for someone like you, Wonwoo,” he spits.

 

Wonwoo stops walking behind him, tugging backwards a little to force Soonyoung to halt too. He turns around, raising his eyebrows. “That wasn’t even anything, Soonyoung? You shouldn’t let something like that upset you; I’m alright.”

 

“I- it’s just because I care, and I feel protective because land’s my turf and I can’t stop people from being-“

 

“I _know_. I know how much you care. And you don’t like admitting you do.” Soonyoung’s cheeks flush angrily. “And it’s why you’re always so upset. I know.”

 

Soonyoung deflects in the best way he can, because this is getting dangerously close to the topic he’s been patching up and trying to avoid opening since the tragedy happened. He doesn’t want to talk about it, nor does he want to come to terms with it. But a slip of his tongue brings him to the dreaded topic anyway, because his mind’s still reeling from the shock and he hasn’t absorbed that Junhui can’t be a name he mentions casually in conversation anymore.

 

And he forgets that Wonwoo isn’t someone he just met, forgets that he doesn’t know what happened and who Junhui even is, because he feels so much towards him already that it feels like he’s known him all his life. (It’s almost like he was sent at this time, to make Soonyoung feel loved and watched-over. So it’s like he’s someone Soonyoung’s known all his life, but hasn’t in reality. To soften the blow of losing the person he’s actually always known.) “It’s just that this person used to always try to hack at Junhui, to melt him down-“

 

Wonwoo furrows his eyebrows. “Junhui? Who’s Junhui?”

 

He steps backwards, tripping on a sand-castle someone built and left to be eaten at and crumbled down by the high tides overnight. He catches himself, but his eyes are still like a deer caught in the headlights. “…Junhui’s gone. He died three weeks ago.” There. Soonyoung said it aloud. For the first time, he’s admitted it to himself and to the world, despite his hardest tries at delusion and stubborn disbelief. Junhui’s gone and dead and he won’t be back.

 

“Would he be the boy, the one whose body I recovered in that same spot…“

 

Soonyoung winces and shuts his eyes tightly, and Wonwoo catches this and immediately trails off. He steps backwards still, eyes closed, his feet sinking until they’re submerged in soft, damp sand.

 

All he can hear is the sound of the waves ebbing and flowing, like time does, but all the waves and ocean do now is rub salt in his gaping wounds.

 

 The sound is no longer comforting (a whisper in his ears, it was) and it no longer centers him. It eats at him like it’ll eat at the sand-castle. Like it ate at Junhui’s body.

 

He doesn’t want to open his eyes, because he doesn’t want to see that pair of wise eyes and whatever expression is within them. But he can see them in his mind’s eye anyway, and they look like black pearls.

 

Wonwoo takes his hand and holds it up to his heart, pressing it to the left side of his chest.

 

Soonyoung feels a low, crashing-and-splashing, ebbing-and-flowing thrum instead of a heartbeat, like the very oceans’ core is caged beneath Wonwoo’s ribs. He bets it is. He bets his blood is clear and he cries saltwater tears.

 

“Let’s go home,” he says, squeezing Soonyoung’s hand and beginning to walk. Home? He wants to ask. Where is their home? Is it out at sea, is it Soonyoung’s apartment, or is it the little yellow boat?

 

 

—

 

 

It’s somewhere in-between. It’s the deck of Soonyoung’s little yellow boat, lit up by blackout candles held upright by melting the wax and sticking it to the railings. But it’s also out at sea, because they’re alone, surrounded by gurgling, swishing darkness. The socket where the moon usually sits is empty, save for the tiny sliver of a new crescent.

 

Home, he finds, is a concept that’s adaptable and relative. His apartment and his parents’ house don’t feel like home anymore. Someone like Soonyoung changes like the moon and never settles in one place. He’s always adventuring and exploring. Someone like Soonyoung loves the ocean for being unpredictable and full of surprises. He finds his home in any niche and corner. Tonight, his home is shared with an ocean prince, whose skin glows without bioluminescence, just by the flickering yellow candlelight.

 

Soonyoung calls the ocean so unpredictable, and yet he’s finding comfort in Wonwoo’s stable quiet right now. He supposes it _can_ be both stable and surprising.

 

He supposes he’s struggling so hard to let his feelings pour out and let himself like Wonwoo properly- instead of viewing his feelings towards him as an inconvenience- because he can’t accept that he’s in love with a manifestation of the beast that robbed him of his friend. And it reminds him of how hard it is to move on.

 

(He’s still in love with the ocean. He’s in love with the ocean’s purest form. And it’s killing him to still be so in-love. But he knows that he can’t get away with blaming something so vast, and he knows he’s got to stop damming his emotions and redirecting his grief into vengeful anger. He should just let himself love Wonwoo.)

 

“Wonwoo,” he whispers. “Dance with me?”

 

He comes closer. “To no music?”

 

“To the sound of the waves. Or maybe imagine a whale song.”

 

Wonwoo takes him in his arms, one hand resting on his hipbone (oh, so gently, for such a powerful hand), the other in Soonyoung’s. Soonyoung mirrors him and they sway back and forth, dancing to the sound of the waves and whistling wind. He smells crackling yellow lightning on the wind, electric and sharp, and if he strains his ears, he can almost hear a distant folk song carrying on the wind. Garbled like it flows from an old radio in a lighthouse somewhere beyond their line of sight. Maybe it’s a siren’s song, in fact.

 

“You didn’t dive down for two consecutive weeks just to discover a new species. True?” Wonwoo mumbles into his ear, voice not at all accusatory. Just plain, bare, and as always, curious.

 

There’s no use keeping the truth from him. Not only that he’ll know eventually, but that Soonyoung doesn’t care about keeping it from him anymore. His coils have been unwound, his screws have been loosened, and he’s become so tired and sad suddenly, the weight of the dam building in his chest choking and suffocating him. “True.”

 

“What were you trying to find?” The way he asks it is so tip-toeing and calculated that it’s impossible he doesn’t already know.

 

Soonyoung opens his eyes and finds that his nose is almost skimming the tip of Wonwoo’s, that’s how close they stand. “I was trying to find a jaguar shark,” he replies blankly. He finds that putting his energy into appearing blank helps him separate the emotional weight from the conversation, therefore making it easier to maintain, instead of shutting Wonwoo down.

 

“A jaguar shark? A particular one?” Wonwoo probes, slowly twirling Soonyoung around him.

 

He shuts one eye so tightly the wrinkled-up eyelid quivers, keeping the other open. “Yes. The one that killed my friend.”

 

“…Junhui?” Wonwoo asks, and the name rolling off his tongue displaces some of the weight in Soonyoung’s chest. It feels like someone knocked something off of the top of a pile, and a little pocket of closure can settle in there.

 

Soonyoung nods and he can’t take it anymore, so he buries his head into the spot where Wonwoo’s neck and shoulder meet. It’s caved-in and hollowed-out to form a dip Soonyoung can hide from the world in, and it smells like everything at once; seaweed, sand, salt. Warm, soft skin.

 

“And the shark?” Wonwoo can feel Soonyoung’s eyelashes fluttering against his skin when he closes them.

 

His voice is muffled both because of the way his face is burrowed right now, and because he’s consciously quieting it down to a whisper not much louder than the wind that makes the water ripple. “What about it?”

 

“You’re trying to hunt it down, aren’t you?” The tone in his voice is unreadable, but there’s a garbled, choked quality to it that usually implies a deeper, lump-in-the-throat emotion is brewing in his chest. Soonyoung all of a sudden understands it’s because his question is rhetorical, as he’s too wise and observant not to have caught up to Soonyoung’s plan by now. And Wonwoo’s probably seen that shark’s entire life playing out, from egg to hatchling to adult. He knows the ocean like he knows the back of his hands.

 

But Soonyoung’s off the deep end, and he can’t get too caught up in Wonwoo’s emotional attachments. He can’t let guilt and knowledge that what he’s doing is wrong fish him out of his mindset- so to speak- when he’s this far through with his plan. It’s too late.

 

“Yes,” Soonyoung finally says, his own voice bitter and small, “and before you start guilting me, I- I-“

 

“I wasn’t going to start saying anything. _Hush_.” He nestles his chin in Soonyoung’s hair, resting it on the top of his head and looking into the distance. Soonyoung feels good cocooned in his arms, comforted by sweet, forgiving words.

 

 

The moment’s broken when Soonyoung separates first, but he leads Wonwoo to the bench that runs along the entire outline of the boat. The surface is cold on their legs, but they sit cross-legged and facing each other anyway.

 

Wonwoo takes Soonyoung’s hands in his, his soft little fingers pattering up and down the ridges and grooves and knuckles. “They’re pretty,” he says, flipping his hands over and running his fingers along the palms, which are, as always, wrinkled like raisins after a whole day in water.

 

He cracks the tiniest smile, but it’s a movement of the mouth and only that, because his eyes are still worn-out and distracted. “The wrinkled raisin skin? You think so?”

 

Wonwoo’s eyes brim over, two perfect teardrops spilling out of each eye and running slowly down his cheeks, appearing as two streams of gold in the candlelight. Soonyoung thumbs them away, at which Wonwoo lets out a bated breath and gives him a watery smile, and Soonyoung dabs at the corners of Wonwoo’s eyes with his pretty, wrinkled fingertips, but no other tears come.

 

“Why are you crying?”

 

“I’m not. Those- they weren’t tears. It was saltwater.”

 

“Okay. Well, anyway, about the shark-“

 

Wonwoo interrupts him. “You’re stubborn and you’re human, so you’re willing to fight me over this one, huh?”

 

Soonyoung isn’t clear on what he means when he says that. “If you had let me finish what I was sayi-“

 

“No, it’s alright. I don’t need to hear it,” he says, as though he’s been testing Soonyoung’s reactions all this time and he’s made up his mind based on them. “I’d rather help you find the shark than argue with you. I’ll show you where it is.”

 

His little yellow boat, bobbing and floating where it’s anchored, has never felt tighter. The distance between him and Wonwoo has never felt farther; he’s in his arms, but it’s like only half of Wonwoo is anchored on the boat with him.

 

 

(Soonyoung won’t learn and move on unless it’s through trial-and-error. He won’t learn that an eye for an eye never solved anything unless he sees the bigger picture, and he won’t see that unless Wonwoo helps him. At least, Wonwoo can only hope he has a change of heart when he sees the shark again. The oceans know how many times his heart’s been broken by selfish humans, taking what they want from him, when he lays out all his magic for them, and leaving him behind in the dirty water churning from their motorboats.)

 

 

They lose track of time, because the night stagnates, the ocean rippling and the wind blowing and the stars glittering in such a constant way that it all almost seems looped. At some point, though, Soonyoung and Wonwoo dance again, and this time when they bring the distance between them to a close as they twirl, hands on each other’s shoulders, and he smells the sand and salt on his skin, he’s tempted and impulsive. A siren’s song is meant to lure him closer, and a siren is meant to seduce him into losing control and acting on impulse. Maybe Wonwoo’s a siren after all.

 

He kisses him, knowing it’ll catch Wonwoo off-guard. But it’s no more than a seconds-long peck, because Wonwoo pushes him away.

 

“Why did you do that?” He asks, the urgency in his voice shattering the silence. His fingers are rubbing at his lips, as if trying to erase the feeling of Soonyoung’s kiss from them.

 

Soonyoung backs away from him and knocks a candle over with his heel. It’s snuffed out, and a thin plume of smoke rises from the waxy remains. “I don’t know, I felt like it.”

 

Wonwoo looks down at his fingertips and then his toes, eyebrows knit together. “This is bad… you shouldn’t have, Soonyoung.”

 

“Why? Is it because you don’t like me?” He frowns at him, feeling embarrassed and guilty. This is why he said it was an inconvenience for Wonwoo to appear in his life. He’d fall in love with his kindness and power and do something stupid and be sidetracked from his original mission. Yet he let himself be fragile and he let himself fall for him.

 

“No, not that,” Wonwoo says, waving his hand dismissively, but he doesn’t elaborate further or make Soonyoung feel better. It’s actually the opposite of that; it’s because he loves him so much that he doesn’t want to kiss him, which is confusing without an explanation. And Wonwoo doesn’t have time to explain it now. So it doesn’t prevent Soonyoung from angrily curling backwards into his shell. “If you want me to show you where the jaguar shark is, then I think you need to come with me now _._ ”

 

This brings Soonyoung to his senses. “Now?”

 

“ _Now._ ”

 

Soonyoung would’ve argued, but the horror in Wonwoo’s voice made him bite his tongue. Besides, arguing with an angry ocean prince on a boat so far out in the deep that there’s no land visible in any direction is a bad idea. He could capsize the ship, or make a wave so big it floods and drowns and batters the entire thing, and Soonyoung would end up like Junhui.

 

He goes to the motor room and retrieves his spear, returning and beginning to tell Wonwoo that it’ll take a while to put on all his diving gear and hook up his oxygen tank.

 

Wonwoo cuts him off, grabbing him around the wrist and dragging him to the ladder. “You don’t have to worry about that. I’ll- you’ll- you’ll be able to breathe just fine. Come on, _hurry_.” He begins climbing down the ladder, and Soonyoung watches as first the bottoms of his pants and then the rest of his clothes darken and wet.

 

“Wonwoo, what’s going on-?”

 

Wonwoo looks up at him pleadingly. Soonyoung has never seen him this desperate. He’s always been so composed and wise, giving off the air of someone with too much knowledge and magic in him. This urgency infects Soonyoung easily, because it’s so uncharacteristic that he’s sure Wonwoo knows more than he lets on, and something horrible is going to happen. “Please. Soonyoung, please, come on.”

 

Soonyoung swallows the growing lump in his throat- at the prospect of the jaguar shark, which he’s, deep down, terrified of seeing (let alone killing), and at the prospect of whatever’s about to happen that Wonwoo’s so terrified of- and takes the ladder two steps at a time, taking one last glance at his little yellow boat, glowing and flickering with candlelight, before he shuts his eyes tightly and melts into the cold abyss.

 

 

—

 

 

He fell in love with the ocean early on. It was almost like he was born with the feeling of only being at home when he’s at least knee-deep in the surging tides, picking out urchins and starfish and little green crabs. When he was a teenager and he’d get mad over trivial things like school grades or arguments with his parents, Junhui always knew to drive him out to the beach.

 

The ocean was like that. The sound of waves lapping at the shore washed over him and soothed him. The smell of saltwater in the fog and wind had a way with him that nothing else did. The ambiguity, and how vastly unknown and unexplored it was, the idea of there being a (figurative) cliff off the edge of which everything was an undiscovered abyss, really got to him. The idea of swimming through dark trenches, the idea of animals that could live without light and sustain themselves on algae, that’s what pushed him to become what he is. And what pushes him backwards is Junhui’s death.

 

But now, he’s finding that he’s still in love, and that’s something that’ll never change. The terrifying power of it, the tons of water that could crush his bones into dust so easily, the sharks and whales that could swallow him up whole and leave nothing but his oxygen tank to rust on the ocean floor- he thinks he can accept that again now. Its serenity would be taken for granted if it weren’t balanced by its wrath.

 

He thinks he hasn’t known Wonwoo physically for long, but he’s known him in another form (as the ocean as a whole) for much longer. And he’s loved him for a very, very long time. Wonwoo’s personality represents these states in the ocean, the tsunami-inducing, volcanic, earth-shaking power, but also the serenity to keep it reined in. The wisdom that comes from millions of years of existence and knowledge. The gentleness- the dolphins that rescue the drowning sailors and carry them ashore, the schools of fish that swim through the corals, the sound of the waves and seagulls that smooths every knot and tangle in his mind.

 

Wonwoo is the one who’s been protecting him. He’s the one who’s been guiding his boat back home every night, he’s the one who’s been softening the currents and curbing his boat from dangerous currents. And Soonyoung’s most sudden revelation is that he sees the same ocean he loves in Wonwoo, but he never put the two together. He sees the dark ripples in his eyes. He sees the moon bouncing off the top of the water in his silver smile. He hears the sound of waves hitting the shore in his voice.

 

And as quickly as the sun disappears below the horizon, seemingly snuffed out by the ocean it sinks into, it all surges back into him. Like waves flowing backwards, like time rewinding, like these last three weeks didn’t really happen. Like none of his hatred and reclusion and revenge were ever there. Like a hurricane that blows in, bringing rain and destruction in its wake, and leaves in the blink of an eye. The hurricane leaves everything it cycled through in a state of deadly calm and serenity, and so does the one that leaves his body now. He shudders and gasps.

 

 

—

 

 

They weave between huge blue cuttlefish, Wonwoo’s grip on Soonyoung’s hand tighter and firmer than before. There’s a timer ticking down somewhere, Soonyoung knows it. He’s being vague and dismissive, and he’s ignoring Soonyoung every time he tries to ask a question- because Wonwoo cast a charm on him, and now he can breathe and speak underwater too.

 

“I’m sorry for kissing you,” Soonyoung tries dejectedly, and he really is. He wishes he hadn’t, if it meant this was the outcome. The speed at which Wonwoo is diving should’ve made Soonyoung’s head implode, what with the lack of decompression stops, but again, whatever magic he put on him prevents it. He still feels lightheaded and dizzy, mostly from overthinking, and he feels like everything he’s said might be floating away with the bubbles that come out of his mouth every time he opens it, before Wonwoo can even catch the words.

 

But Wonwoo does hear, and he shakes his head, keeping his eyes trained ahead. It’s like he can’t bear to look Soonyoung in the face anymore. What’s going on? “That wasn’t the problem.”

 

“Then why’d you tell me I shouldn’t have kissed you earlier?” Soonyoung whines, miserable.

 

“Because you indeed shouldn’t have- listen, I’ll explain it in a minute. Not now.”

 

They come to a stop. All Soonyoung can see are clouds of silt swirling slowly around them. Visibility is incredibly low. He wouldn’t be able to see Wonwoo if he hadn’t been bioluminescent, glowing white and pale blue.

 

Wonwoo shushes him when he begins to speak, asking if this is the place, putting a hand over his mouth, so Soonyoung is gagged by his soft palm. He swallows the saliva pooling in his mouth and tries not to breathe too hard into Wonwoo’s hand. He can feel his anxiety mounting, the hairs on his body spiking, his spine tingling and his neck slick with cold sweat. His stomach twists and tangles in on itself, and he feels the familiar chills, like cold invisible fingers are prodding along his vertebrae.

 

A shudder passes through him when he feels a presence near them, heightened by the fact that Wonwoo’s hand- the one over his mouth, not the one holding his other hand tightly- stiffens and tightens too. He can almost feel a new density, a new darkness somewhere in the left periphery of his vision. He gulps again.

 

And then there’s the sound of the water as something cuts through it and swishes it in one direction. And then, there’s the belly of a jaguar shark looming above them, gliding lazily.

 

It’s huge. It swamps both Soonyoung and Wonwoo easily. It could probably swamp an entire school bus. Its teeth are probably… Soonyoung doesn’t even want to think about that. That’s too close to untouchably sensitive territory.

 

It turns slowly on its side and swims a slow, steady loop around them, fins moving as though in slow-motion, gills swelling and deflating almost mesmerizingly. Soonyoung only sees one of its sharp yellow eyes. But in its eyes he sees nothing out of the ordinary.

 

This is the same shark that, according to Wonwoo, killed his best friend. The exact same one. This is the animal he fantasized about having glowing red eyes and teeth that drip with blood. But here, in front of him, as he cranes his neck to catch as much of the shark as his eyes can hold, he sees nothing, if not curiosity in its eyes. Here he realizes that animals operate on instinct and if scared, they become defensive and vicious. Only here does he realize, and only here, swamped and dwarfed by the shark he’s been hunting for weeks, does it all unravel in his mind. Only here is he able to let everything go, in one flattening sigh.

 

 

Wonwoo’s watching him, and Soonyoung still has his spear in his hand. The jaguar shark’s spotted stomach is exposed for his taking, an easy target from where he and Wonwoo float. If he just threw his spear precisely, he’d hit its heart and take it down. Seven thousand feet below, he stands in the dark on the ocean floor, his only goal for the last three weeks right above him, innocent and unaware of his motives. It’s not fair to reap a life from a creature that knows not of what the weapon in his hands will do or that anything it did three weeks ago was more than survival and instinct.

 

Soonyoung lifts the spear and Wonwoo gasps, but all he does is drive it firmly into the sand, so hard that it stands upright alone next to them. That breaks the motionless, frozen silence they were suspended in for who knows how long, and it breaks the depth of the moment entirely. The jaguar shark swims away, and Wonwoo gapes at Soonyoung.

 

“You didn’t do it…” he lifts the hand he had covering his mouth, keeping the other hooked firmly in Soonyoung’s fingers.

 

Soonyoung breathes deeply, and ironically enough, for someone coming out of rock-bottom emotionally yet physically standing under billions of gallons of water, it’s the clearest, sharpest breath he’s taken in a long while. “It’s not important to me anymore.”

 

“After all that?” The urgency and panic in Wonwoo’s voice subsides for a moment, until Soonyoung looks down at their hands and notices that Wonwoo’s fingers are stubs and there’s some invisible force eating away at his hand, as though cloaking it in some kind of invisibility.

 

“Wonwoo, why are your hands gone…?” Soonyoung is grasping at his hands but he can’t feel them anymore, and now his wrists are fading slowly too.

 

To his utter horror, Wonwoo looks down, unsurprised by this turn of events. “It’s an old thing. Too old, details are fuzzy, I’ve lived through too many millennium to remember it properly,” he begins, speaking very rapidly, “But essentially, ocean princes fall in love easily, and it’s often unrequited. So if a mortal kisses me- or I kiss them- I disappear. From your sight. You won’t be able to see,” he raises his disappeared hands, and Soonyoung only sees that because his forearms are still visible, “or hear me anymore.”

 

“What? _No_ , stop-“ he’s grasping at him, but now it’s eating at his shoulders and clavicles, and those beautiful pearl strings around his neck, the bioluminescence in his skin, it’s all disappearing from Soonyoung’s sight and he knows he’ll panic and forget how Wonwoo looks or feels or smells as soon as he’s gone.

 

He grabs his face before it fades and presses his lips flush against his, and Wonwoo presses into him this time, instead of breaking off and backing away. Wonwoo’s lips are warm and wet, and so are his cheeks. Soonyoung can feel boiling-hot saltwater tears falling from his eyes and clinging to his hands, which are cupping Wonwoo’s cheeks.

 

And isn’t it cruel that the only kiss he’ll ever share with him is also their last?

 

When he breaks away, Wonwoo gasps for air. “You’ll only see me again when you somehow prove that your love is-“ and his voice gurgles and bubbles and flattens out into a whisper, and then nothing. He’s moving his lips but no sound comes out. Wonwoo stops, no longer frantic because it’s done and it’s over. Instead his features carry a kind of heavy, knowing sadness, after experiencing this hundreds of times before with sailors and fishermen and other lonely little divers like Soonyoung. But Soonyoung’s different because he loves him back, and Soonyoung knew better than any of the others did when Wonwoo had given them the option of loving him, or taking the treasures he’d lain for them and running back to their land. Soonyoung is _so_ different from them.

 

His very last thought before he fades away is that he trusts in Soonyoung. He trusts Soonyoung to find a way. His love for him- their love for each other- flows too deeply and strongly.

 

Soonyoung wants to stay and scour the water for Wonwoo, until he finally clutches at his billowing white clothes again, but he’s afraid that the water-breathing charm Wonwoo had put on him will fade soon, now that Wonwoo’s gone. He wants to cry, because he’s kept the pain of other things bottled in for weeks, and this alone is so much on his fragile, weary body that he almost collapses. The idea of a nap on the ocean floor is too tempting, especially a nap he knows he’ll never wake up from.

 

But his willpower is too strong and he swims up to the surface, swallowing tears and heat that parches his throat, gasping and grabbing for the ladder. It’s still dark out, but the moon’s setting, and all his candles have been blown out by the wind. Like Wonwoo never was there, glowing bronze and dancing to imaginary songs with him.

 

The very moment Soonyoung began to let go of all the weight pressing down on his chest, to accept the loss of Junhui, the person he found himself most attached to after that was taken forcefully from him. None of it is fair. When he finally cries, his tears are bitter when they trickle down into the sides of his mouth, and red when they stain the backs of his hands as he wipes them away. Red like Shirley Temples and diluted blood.

 

When he steps onto the boat, however, he finds something, much like he found the message in a bottle when he first met Wonwoo. It’s a waxy pink conch. Soonyoung picks it up carefully, running his fingers along the grooves and twists.

 

He’s terrified of what he’ll hear if he presses it to his ear.

 

 

—

 

 

When he does, he expects instructions. He expects him to tell him how to find him again. He’s lost and confused and he’s so scattered, so spread out, broken like bits of green sea-glass, that he has no idea what to do to find Wonwoo again. He needs someone to tell him slowly, to guide him through it.

 

But when he does, all he hears is laughter echoing out of the conch. The gentle crash of waves hitting the sand, rolling out and pulling back. The earth-shaking, hurricane-spinning tremors in his voice. Deep, ragged breaths, and four sentences, whispered.

 

_“We’ll see each other again. You just need to keep your eyes, and your heart, wide open._

_Don’t forget your Wonwoo, and I’ll never forget my Soonyoung.”_

—

 

 

Soonyoung is the one anchored to this stretch of turquoise, not his boat. His heart’s been tied to a weight and thrown down to sink among the reeds and grass, and he won’t find it until he finds his Wonwoo again. He’s searching for something he just can’t reach, something just beyond his fingertips, on the tip of his tongue. He feels himself coming a hair’s width away from finding it- _him_ \- but something stops him every time.

 

It seems his life is destined to fruitless searches. But in the beginning, he found Wonwoo, and maybe now he’ll find him again, if this is a full-circle repetition of what happened a few weeks ago. If this flipped his life upside-down and sent him floundering, maybe searching and finding him again will flip it right-side-up again.

 

He does something only someone with a death wish would consider doing.  But his reasoning is that it’d be quite alright if his lungs filled with sand and millions of tons of water until they cracked and exploded, as long as he finds his Wonwoo. _As long as I find my Wonwoo again._

 

What he does is simple; he disconnects his mouthpiece, unplugs it from the oxygen tank, and takes a deep breath before he pries it from his lips, so they’re free in the water. He says only three words, three beautiful words, and they gurgle and bubble out of his mouth.

 

He feels a presence behind him, and when he turns, he sees a blade of grass swishing in the direction opposing the current. He sees a flash of something white, billowy and silky, hears whispers and peals of laughter. He feels warmth enveloping him. Someone’s there.

 

 

**THE END**

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading!! HAPPY SOONWOO DAY!
> 
> This story was supposed to be heavily based off of the film 'The Life Aquatic', but I suppose it ended up being much more loosely based when I merged it with the WS prompt. Oh, well.
> 
> [This](https://reefbuilders.com/files/2016/02/paracheilinus-alfiani.jpg), P. Alfiani, is the fish Wonwoo caught for Soonyoung's discovery. It was a new discovery in 2016, and isn't it pretty?
> 
> Don't hesitate to comment, and don't forget to spread the love to all the wonderful participants and their creations!!


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